With volcanic peaks, wild flowers and hot springs, the Cantal region is the perfect destination for a springtime road trip

Getting away from it all is surely the idea behind every holiday, yet as I drive through undulating countryside towards the village of Salers in France’s Massif Central, I wonder whether I’ve ever felt quite so away from everything.

This is the appeal of the Cantal, the rural heartland of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, in which the Massif Central is nestled. If you continue east from the Dordogne and Lot, you’ll discover a land of volcanic peaks, hot springs and welcoming auberges in one of France’s least populated departments. And, as I learn, it makes for a refreshingly different destination for a springtime road trip. The snow lingers on those peaks until early April, but I’m here in early May and the meadows abound in an extraordinary display of wildflowers, such as arnica, narcissi, orchids and myriad other species that thrive in that volcanic soil. The landscape is one of the most richly biodiverse in Europe.

From rambling rhetoric and ‘the weave’ to the proverbially feeble, test your knowledge with the Saturday Quiz

1 In physics, what unsolved problem is abbreviated TOE?
2 Who established her visitor attraction in 1835 at the Baker Street Bazaar?
3 Which Australian marsupial was known as the native cat?
4 Who calls his rambling rhetoric “the weave”?
5 Why might a person weighing 45kg be proverbially feeble?
6 What arcade game is known as “flipper” in French?
7 What was first celebrated in Rome in 1300?
8 Which comic is purportedly edited by Tharg the Mighty?
What links:
9 East; Sunrise; Union; Salute; Peace/World?
10 Olympics 2024; Las Vegas 2011 to 2019; Oscars 1998; Eurovision 1988?
11 Peace (17); Physics (25); Medicine (32); Chemistry (35); Literature (41); Economics (46)?
12 Quire; ream; bundle; bale; pallet?
13 Pope Benedict XVI; William Bligh; CS Lewis; Richard Nixon; Pablo Picasso?
14 Farm building; light brown; small; brief and lengthy hearing organs?
15 Not Like Us; Yeah!; Diamonds; California Love; Blinding Lights?

In past decade, pre-film reels have extended to about 25 minutes for ads and trailers, according to experts

Movie buffs already lamenting the length of time it takes to get to the start of a film might be disappointed to learn that pre-cinema ads are getting longer.

Over the past 10 years, adverts for products and brands have taken up a larger proportion of pre-film reels in cinemas, according to experts.

The Atlanta actor is the main reason to carry on watching this predictable, shootout-packed crime drama. Anyone who’s watched true-crime shows would be a better gangster than these knuckleheads

It takes approximately 3,600 hours of on-the-job training to qualify as a police detective in the UK – or about 1,000 hours of true-crime content. Once you’re up to date on 24 Hours in Police Custody, can accurately guess the killer within the opening strains of the Dateline theme tune (pro tip: it’s the husband), and have developed a strong working theory on the Jill Dando assassination, you should be automatically granted powers of arrest, shouldn’t you?

Similarly, while watching Dope Thief, the Apple TV+ miniseries (streaming from 14 March) about a pair of small-time stick-up guys, played by Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura, any ordinary viewer will feel they’d climb the cartel’s promotion track faster than these knuckleheads. I know I would. You don’t watch all five seasons of The Wire and Breaking Bad, plus six of Better Call Saul, without picking up a thing or two about evading police detection and the importance of a clear managerial structure among meth-heads. Meanwhile, these dumb-dumbs are stumbling on to the eastern seaboard’s main drug-trafficking corridor, without so much as pressing play on Narcos season one. Which is especially weird, because Moura also starred in that one.

Crypto cons top the list of investment frauds, with Elon Musk also among the figures used in fake ads

• Revealed: the scammers who conned savers out of $35m
• How call centre scammers duped 6,000 people

Martin Lewis and Elon Musk don’t appear to have much in common. One is a trusted British personal finance guru; the other is the world’s richest person and a close ally of Donald Trump. However, their wisdom and wealth respectively make them a powerful weapon for scammers.

“I have the dubious honour … of being used in more scam ads than anyone else in the UK, even though I never do any advertising,” Lewis tells the Guardian.

Once, anti-establishment youth disillusioned with mainstream politics headed left. Now increasing numbers are tilting right. Why?

Josh is 24 years old and works as a carer. It’s not easy work, but he prefers it to his old job in a supermarket: most of his clients are elderly and “just want someone there with them, because they’re lonely”. In his spare time Josh used to be into boxing. But lately he’s got into politics instead.

Like many of his gen Z contemporaries, he’s thoroughly disillusioned with the mainstream kind. “The two parties that have been in power for 100-plus years have done nothing. The economy’s a mess,” he scoffs. But if he sounds like the kind of anti-establishment young person who once rallied to the radical left, Josh’s frustration has taken him in another direction. An ardent leaver in his teens, who backed Boris Johnson in 2019, he now belongs to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.